A Queens stem cell donor will meet and learn the identity of the Virginia stranger whose life he saved with a transplant through Gift of Life Marrow Registry, during the ceremonial lighting of Brooklyn’s biggest menorah on the first night of Chanukah, December 22, at Grand Army Plaza.

Celebrate with Cris and other celebrities while helping Gift of Life Marrow Registry cure blood cancer and other blood diseases through bone marrow and stem cell transplants.

Eli Myron is turning his long-time hobby of scuba diving into a career through the research opportunities he’s experienced at Florida State University...In addition, he is a Campus Ambassador for the Gift of Life Marrow Registry, giving presentations and raising awareness for the marrow registry around the Tallahassee community.

At the time, Zak Blumer had no idea that he was saving a life. While attending Ohio University, the 23-year-old just happened to stop by an event that his twin brother's fraternity was hosting in conjunction with the Gift of Life Marrow Registry. The organization was on campus looking for potential donors and, since he had some free time, he thought, why not? "It was just a quick cheek swab, so of course I did it," Blumer said.

One of the philanthropists I am privileged to know is Jay Feinberg; he was a 22-year-old foreign exchange analyst in 1991 when he was diagnosed with leukemia and told that his survival depended on a bone marrow transplant. When no close matches were found among relatives, his family and friends — and Hadassah — launched a drive to register potential donors, identifying dozens of matches for other patients before they finally found one for Jay.

A simple cheek swab collected at a Chicago Jewish donor drive saved the life of a baby who was battling an inherited immune symptom disorder until his transplant. Brooke Dordek, a then 34-year-old mother of two and special needs teacher at Joan Dachs Bais Yaakov Elementary School, proved to be an exact tissue type match to two-year-old Sebastian Martinez of California who desperately needed a stem cell donation.